The overall Oscar Contest winner, Chris Page, got to pick a movie for me to review and his choice was “Das Boot”…a rental, but relatively easy to find. Below is my review.


DAS BOOT 4.0**** Das Boot'' was first released in the United States in 1981, it ran 2hr. 25 min. and won huge audiences and no less than 6 Oscar nominations. It was re-released in 1997 in Wolfgang Petersens's Director's cut, which added 65 minutes for a total running time of 3 hrs. and 30 min..also the sound was digitally re-mastered (has great surround sound and gives the woofers quite a work-out) and scenes were re-edited …they did a masterful job. (Nonetheless, if 3 hrs. 30 min. is too intimidating, the original version is great and probably overall the better of the two as it has a tighter, more suspenseful feel to it.

While it had been a while (1981) since I had seen this movie, it didn’t take long to become re-immersed in this intensely gripping story of war from a submariner’s perspective and be reminded that "war is hell", no matter from which side you look at it and no matter where the battlefield is located. Das Boot has been touted as the best WW II submarine film of all time, and it's not difficult to understand why. Everything's top notch in this German-made film…best seen in subtitles.

You follow the exploits of the crew of German U-boat U-96 on its mission in 1941 to destroy Allied convoys. You see the frustrations of long spells of inaction and the lonely, crowded, monotonous life aboard a submarine. More than anything, you experience the intense claustrophobic feel of those older WW II submarines which were only 10 feet wide and 150 long. What's particularly gripping in this film is when the action starts to pick up. We see that German U-boats, when discovered, were like sitting ducks as Allied destroyers criss-crossed above them dropping multiple deadly depth charges trying to destroy their underwater prey. The U-boat starts as the hunter, but once it has hunted, it becomes the prey. When so, the film very effectively…in fact marvelously.. captures the overwhelming fear of the crew as revealed in their eyes, as they huddle in silence each time the enemy lurks above. The suspense literally keeps you at the edge of your seat, the silence is truly deafening until the depth charges commence, and these sequences with the hugh underwater explosions and jarring impact on the U-boat jar you to the point where you literally want to scream out "stop it, Stop It, STOP IT….that's how real it felt.

I could go on and on. But I will close by saying that the story, direction, cinematography, acting, sound, music, editing are ALL top notch, and this is one of the few movies that I can easily and truly rate a full 4 out of 4****..